Disruptive Marketing For Developers Zack Urlocker - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Disruptive Marketing For Developers Zack Urlocker - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Jan 10, 2024 199 likes •466 views

Disruptive Marketing For Developers Zack Urlocker Zurlocker@gmail.com Twitter: @ZUrlocker Heavybit August 2013 1 About Me Bachelor of Computer Science, M. Math U of Waterloo 20+ years in the software industry: Borland, Active

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Disruptive Marketing For Developers

Zack Urlocker Zurlocker@gmail.com Twitter: @ZUrlocker Heavybit August 2013

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About Me

  • Bachelor of Computer Science, M. Math U of Waterloo
  • 20+ years in the software industry:

Borland, Active Software, webMethods, MySQL, Zendesk

  • Investor, advisor, board member
  • Multiple billion dollar exits
  • Marathon runner, blues guitarist
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30 Years of Sustained Innovation

  • CPU: 1 Mhz to 2.4 Ghz (2,000x)
  • Comms: 300 baud to T1 30 Mbps (10,000x)
  • Memory: 64k to 64GB (1,000,000x)
  • Disk: 140k to 1 Tb (1,000,000,000x)
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30 Years of Platform Shifts

1977 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

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Platform = Opportunity

  • Technology evolution enables new platforms
  • Picking the wrong platform can be devastating
  • The wider the adoption, the greater the opportunity
  • Platform gets better and better until…
  • …it seems unstoppable

Installed base Attractiveness to developers More Applications Attractiveness to users New sales

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That’s When Disruption Can Happen

  • An inferior solution
  • In an unattractive business
  • That changes the game
  • Creates vast new markets
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What Makes a Product Disruptive?

Implications

  • Big companies act rationally to serve high margin customers
  • Focus on use cases that are below their radar
  • Because something is better does not make it disruptive
  • 1. There is a proven market
  • 2. There are underserved users
  • 3. The new business is inherently

unattractive to old incumbents

  • 4. It plays by different rules
  • 5. It disrupts all of the players
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Typical Pattern of Disruption

Implications

  • Incumbents are good at sustained innovation
  • Startups are good at disruptive innovation
  • Know which side of the equation you are on

Innovator’s Dilemma

  • New entrant considered inferior
  • New entrant gains toehold
  • Old incumbent waits & watches
  • New entrant becomes “good enough”
  • Niche market booms
  • Old incumbent mimics disruptor
  • New model wins
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In What Ways Can You Disrupt?

  • Business model
  • Distribution
  • Technology
  • Market
  • Pricing?
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Specialty vs. Commodity

  • Features, Complexity
  • Proprietary lock-in
  • Low volume / high margin
  • Limited market
  • Many vendors
  • Ease of use, Simplicity
  • Interoperable standards
  • High volume / low margin
  • Widespread adoption
  • One dominant vendor
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Winners in Commoditization

Company Market Mkt Cap Positioning

Retail $255 B Everyday low prices Microprocessors $112 B The world leader in silicon innovation Online Retail $135 B World’s largest selection at the lowest possible prices CRM $27 B On-demand solutions cost 90% less than traditional IT Travel $10 B Great low fares Linux $10 B Making high quality, low cost technology accessible DBMS $1 B 90% lower TCO than legacy closed source databases

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Disrupting the DBMS Market

Source: ”The Innovator’s Dilemma”, Clayton M Christensen

time

Overkill What Customers Want Perceived as a Toy

Open Source disrupted enterprise infrastructure

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Disrupting the DBMS Market Incumbents

  • High prices
  • Direct sales model
  • Mission critical
  • Complex features
  • TPC benchmarks
  • Expensive hardware

MySQL

  • Free Open Source
  • Widespread distribution
  • Web applications
  • Small footprint
  • Fast read-access
  • Commodity x86
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How Did We Do?

  • MySQL grew 60-90% per year
  • 50,000 downloads per day
  • Millions of web sites: Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Twitter,

Craigslist, Facebook, Wikipedia, Travelocity, Zappos…

  • Coexistence with incumbents
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How Did The Incumbents React?

  • Ignored us for 2 years
  • Could not understand the model
  • Launched zero-cost “Express” editions…
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Man The Battlestations!

  • Announce Pluggable Engine Strategy
  • Renegotiate InnoDB contract w/Oracle
  • Work on Plan B
  • Raise more money
  • Stay independent!

Pluggable Architecture

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What Happened?

  • Half a dozen new storage engines in development
  • Renewed agreement for InnoDB distribution
  • Customers continued buying
  • Worked towards IPO in late 2007
  • Acquired by Sun for $1B early 2008
  • Sun acquired by Oracle for $7B 2010
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Why did Oracle Want MySQL?

  • It’s hard for incumbents to

innovate but…

  • Easy to acquire innovation
  • Provides greater competition

against Microsoft SQLServer

  • Enabled Oracle to offer a

complete open source stack…

  • Without destroying their core

business

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Avoid the Pitfalls When Disrupting

  • Don’t play the incumbent’s game
  • Don’t target high-end, high-margin markets
  • Don’t try to change customer behavior
  • Don’t favor fast growth ahead of profit
  • Don’t be “partially” disruptive
  • Don’t saddle a disruptive idea with old

processes & overhead costs

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Marketing to Developers

  • Don’t give me no marketing fluff
  • Don’t make me jump through hurdles
  • Developers are motivated to acquire new skills
  • Build a community
  • Content is king

– Tutorials – How to guides – Best practices – Certification

  • Don’t forget management
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Don’t Waste Your Money On…

  • Customer lists
  • Fancy trade shows
  • “Guaranteed” meetings
  • Traditional analyst firms
  • Expensive sponsorships
  • Things you can’t measure
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Instead…

  • Make your customers successful
  • Share your expertise
  • Case studies, webinars, whitepapers
  • Speak at conferences
  • Generate news
  • Sponsor user groups, meetups
  • Invest in SEO, Google Ad Words
  • A/B test everything
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Optimize The Buying Process

  • Who is your ideal customer?
  • How will they find you?
  • What is your value to a customer?
  • How easy is it to understand?
  • How easy is it to trial? To buy?
  • Who converts best?
  • Why do people drop out?
  • Streamline all interactions
  • Small changes can yield big results
  • Don’t hire Sales until there is demand
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Other Things…

  • Never stop learning
  • Work on hard things that matter
  • If in doubt, don’t hire
  • Sometimes, buck convention
  • Brute force execution can overcome many challenges
  • Spend less than you make
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Resources

  • TechCrunch: Rachleff, “What ‘Disrupt’ Really Means”
  • HBR: Drucker, “What Makes an Effective Executive”
  • Clayton Christensen, “The Innovator’s Dilemma”
  • Charles Ferguson, “High Stakes, No Prisoners”
  • Thomas Stanley, “The Millionaire Mind”
  • Tracy Kidder, “Soul of a New Machine”
  • Guy Kawasaki, “Art of the Start”